Sunday, August 3, 2014

The Beginning...

My name is Maija. I'm 16 years old high school student from southern Finland. Next year I'll be an exchange student in Indiana, United States of America. I'm writing this blog especially for my family and friends who stay in Finland. I'll write in English to improve my English skills and so that my host-family and American friends are able to read this also.

I'll live in small town about 200 km from the capital Indianapolis. There I'll go to school which is located 5 km from my host family's house.


Before last Autumn I hadn't never thought about going exchange myself. I had just heard about other's experiences. Then I started to think what if I'd go. I was thinking that for a while and I was sure I WANT to go. As YFU's motto says (freely translated): "it doesn't matter where you go if you at least go". I wanted to learn about different cultures and language skills would get better at the same time. I decided that my first choise is USA, Great Britannia would have also been good but many organizations don't do student exchange there. My second choise was Germany but I thought I'd rather improve my English skills. Of course Germany would have been great too.

In Autumn I started to search information about exchange and I applied trought few organizations. I think I was little bit too late because in many countries there were no more places for exchange students. Luckily I still got mine. If you want to be an exchange student, I recommend you to start early, like in August or earlier. I have been filling in sooo much papers and stuff but I'm sure this year will be worth of it and much more!

Information about my host family came in April. I was so happy because I had no idea when they will come. It would be possible that I'll be flying to the USA and have no information about my host family. But I was lucky!

In the beginning of summer I was just really excited about next year. A month ago I realized how much I will miss everything in Finland. Well, now I haven't yet realized that after one week I won't be here anymore for ten months. I'm still very excited. I know there will be ups and downs but I know that this won't be just a year in my life, this will be my other life in a year.

- Maija -

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